Phill Gartside's Plan To Scrap Relegations Picks Up Support..

Premier League chief executives have proposed plans to ensure that there is no relegation from the Premier League.

Every season promotions and relegations are to be left to a panel who will judge a club's welfare and right to compete in the world's best and most watched league, according to the plans.

Ludicrous.

The model of the English Football league system, including the much watched and renowned across the world Premier League, has been the cornerstone of world football since its creation in 1888. It's ability to have clubs, under brilliant guidance and management, rising through the leagues to reach the promised land has created legacies.

Clubs do get relegated and clubs who are not correctly managed and so naive that they cannot plan for relegation do suffer.

Clubs who over spend in the Championship, formerly Division One, in an attempt to bounce back in their first season after relegation and do not achieve their aims, place themselves in a bad position. But that's their call. They are in control of their own budgets and if they do not balance the books, it's the risk that they take.

But to use this as the definitive reasoning for a franchise, American styled, applying for Premier League status each year would completely negate the romance and attraction of the league.

Supporters of this proposal would argue that it safeguards the league's most lucrative teams. It is, however, entirely up to those clubs who wish to be and remain Premier League outfits to make sure that they compete at that level.

Who has the right to decide whether your club, who may only have a 10,000 stadium capacity, but have played fantastic football to earn the right to compete in the Premier League, can achieve Premier League status?

What happens when a club wins the Championship but is a subsidiary club to the larger clubs in the area, i.e. Tranmere Rovers F.C and cannot get a bigger fan-base without playing at the top level?

What's the next step? A rigged FA Cup, ensuring that the bigger teams get byes into the next round because that's “What people want to watch”?

No, people want the romance that football can bring and that's the attraction. That's how the English Football League system has become the best watched league in the world. And that's why the second tier of English football ranks as the 4^th most watched league in the world.

Mancini Backed Into Corner

Mancini Backed Into Corner.

Watching Andrew Neil's interview with the Home Secretary Theresa May on Today At Conference left me agonising about a politician's inability to answer a straight question, but also in admiration of the savvy, media-trained approach that all these people in public-speaking authority have at never answering a straight question with an straight answer.

Andrew Neil: “Will London Metropolitian Police endure cuts, contrary to what Boris Johnson has said

                         has said about the policing numbers remaining the same?”
Theresa May: “Each police constabulary decides their own budget.”

There is never definitive answers. Definitives back people into a corner with little room for change and they can then be quoted later as contradicting themselves at a later date.

So why has Roberto Mancini completely backed himself into a corner by saying, ceremoniously, that Carlos Tevez will never play for Manchester City again? It's an absolute. It's definitive. There is no room for maneuver within that statement.

Now, with gossip rife about a poor translation, and I believe that the translator should be 'definitively' sacked if he has managed to create this controversy because of poor skills, Mancini has nowhere to go. He has to back down and appear weak, which will create dissolution within his dressing room, or he has to keep to his word.

The enigma: Carlos Tevez.

Daniel Levy, the Tottenham Hotspur Chairman, previously held a similar stance over Luka Modric's self imposed transfer earlier in the season. He remained to his word, creating a great, feel-good factor in the game and around contract negotiations. One – nil to the regular people over the money-hungry footballers; one – nil to honouring contracts; in truth probably 89 – 1 in favour of the players, but it was a cutting blow to powerful players everywhere.

Mancini has left himself a miniscule amount of paths to pursue with Tevez. Maybe the most obvious way to proceed is to announce that in fact Tevez was misquoted and that it was all a misunderstanding, as Man City's injury list is compounding with news that Mario Balotelli is now injured, too.

Obviously, Mancini was reacting initially to the situation and must have been quite peeved with the scenario, how he saw it unfold. Maybe a step back and announcing nothing would have been the more prudent course until all the facts had come out, failing that a Theresa May-esque dodging session may have been in order.

Right now, Mancini is in an awkward position over the want-away hit-man. He has a £ 40M striker who only plays when he wants to – not the greatest asset in a football squad.